POETRY CRITICISM FEATURED ARTIST CONTRIBUTORS GUIDELINES ABOUT TIMELINE

Haiku in Praise of the Water Chestnut How dull the stir fry bereft of these white discs, coins. Dear water chestnut. Sing between my teeth. How I love your percussion as my teeth slice through. O fresh, fresh tuber. Eager as a potato, you sprout if too warm. Charitable treat. How kind you are to let me peel your skin like fruit. Most steadfast chestnut. No wok robs your crunch, no boil can soften your song. Doxology with Crow Awe, awe, they cry. -Donald Platt For the levity of your full black bulk high-stepping over snow; for your cloak of oil, how the sun reveals its gem-spectrum; for your unfurled wings shimmering: praise him. Jacks I play jacks with my mother, impossibly young as she, seven or eight, spindly, kneeling on linoleum under dim, orange light. Between our knob-knees bings the rubber ball; the jacks chink in quick fists. First to gather all ten without a double bounce or mishap, my mother wins. Always said she was good at jacks, I think. I watch her darker hair willow down long beside mine; see freckles shift with a smirk; hear her hand clasp jacks: a fist full of molecules like God's. This tinny jingle of jacks is the jumbled song of me. In dreams I meet the girl not yet dreaming of me. AUTHOR BIO Shanna Powlus Wheeler recently graduated from the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the Pennsylvania State University, where she taught courses in composition and creative writing. She hopes to find a publisher for her first collection of poems, "Lo & Behold," which demonstrates a poetics of song and praise, often from a Judeo-Christian perspective. Poems from this manuscript have appeared or are forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, The Christian Century, and North American Review. She also has a book review forthcoming in The Missouri Review. In August, she will begin a career in higher education as Director of the Writing Center at Lycoming College in Williamsport, PA. She lives in Lock Haven, PA with her husband Drew. POETRY CONTRIBUTORS Debra Bruce Maryann Corbett Barbara Crooker Rachel Hadas Kathryn Jacobs Michele Leavitt Charlotte Mandel Annabelle Moseley Traci O'Dea Shanna Powlus Wheeler Gail White Marly Youmans FEATURED ARTIST Judith Taylor: No one seems to disagree with me when I say there's something compelling about these images. Maybe it's because we're so inundated by the media with narrative that is manipulated and inflated that these honest little private struggles to say something touch us at the core. The eye with which we see them now is not the eye of the young writer, and that distance is interesting, surprising. Maybe the connection between the adolescent girl and the adult woman, or the diary page and the studio wall, is closer than I think. ARCHIVES LINKS POETRY 32 Poems The Academy of American Poets The Atlantic The Christian Science Monitor The Cortland Review Favorite Poem Project The Frost Place The Iowa Review Light Quarterly Modern American Poetry Measure The Poem Tree Poetry Poetry Daily Poetry Society of America Poets House Raintown Review Slate String Poet Valparaiso Poetry Review Verse Daily Women's Poetry Listserv The Yale Review CONFERENCES AWP Bread Loaf Poetry by the Sea Sewanee PUBLISHERS Barefoot Muse Press David Robert Books David R. Godine Press Graywolf Press Headmistress Press The Johns Hopkins University Press Louisiana State University Press Northwestern Univ Press Ohio Univ Press Persea Books Red Hen Press Texas Tech Univ Press Tupelo Press Univ of Akron Press Univ of Arkansas Press Univ of Illinois Press Univ of Iowa Press Waywiser Press White Violet Press BOOKS Alibris City Lights Grolier Poetry Bookshop Joseph Fox Bookshop Prairie Lights Tattered Cover Bookstore OTHER RESOURCES 92nd Street Y Literary Mothers NewPages.com Poets & Writers 10X10